From Scratch
Posted by Anne
A Life in Pencil strawberry tart...created the weekend Elizabeth and I planned to start our blog.
If you’ve read this blog for very long, you’ve probably deduced that both Elizabeth and I are avid cooks. We tinker in the kitchen, swap recipes, and drool over food blogs. When Elizabeth visited me last summer, we spent a chipper afternoon in my teeny kitchen, creating a strawberry tart from farm-fresh Northwestern berries. I left the custard up to Liz, knowing she’d manage just fine, while I rolled out a crust and eased it into the tart pan. We cook. I’d like to humbly (or not-so-humbly?) submit that we both cook pretty well. And we cook from scratch.
From Scratch. I wonder about this phrase. There’s value in this phrase…and pride. It’s the barometer for “real cooking.” Go to a party bearing a homemade pie or batch of zucchini bread, and you just might be asked, “Did you make this from scratch?” 99% of the time, my answer is “yes”. And part of the reason I cook from scratch is because it’s simply what I know…it runs in the family. One need look no further than my sister or mother. My mother is notorious for only buying the makings of a tasty meal. I had a friend in high school—he’d enter our kitchen, open the fridge, and groan. “Don’t you have any food?” This was always odd to me, since my Mom’s fridge is generally stuffed to the gills with…food. When I’d point this out, my friend would reply, “No, I mean SNACKS. You always have very fine looking ingredients with which someone might make something. But that’s not the same.” And my Mom has passed this on. I can confidently say Elizabeth is the same—her culinary gifts were handed down by her equally gifted mother, and then honed to a talent by her own curiosity.
But there’s another reason I cook from scratch—beyond the influence of my mother. I love the process. I love starting with a few raw ingredients, and crafting them into a whole. I love beginning—pulling bottles of spices from my cabinet, and veggies from the drawers of my fridge. I love stirring, whisking, and wondering how the finished product will look and taste. And despite my love of lists, I often find myself tampering with recipes, or ditching them altogether. Cooking—from scratch—is part of my routine, and my life.
My cookbook shelf. (Or at least one of them...)
From scratch. It’s an integral part of my culinary self, but I’m afraid it ends there. If there’s one thing I avoid in my life, it’s starting over again…from scratch. It’s puzzling to me, because I have the ingredients to start from scratch. I am resilient. I can even be tough. I’m an extrovert who loves meeting new people. And at times, I’m even creative. The raw material is there. But new beginnings still exhaust me—making me wish for the brownie-mix version of a head start when it comes to planting myself in a new situation, new job, new community, or new life.
We often need to start from scratch. For good reasons and difficult reasons. Marriage. Divorce. Loss. Birth. We need to know how to start over, and use the gifts (ingredients) we’ve inherited and developed. We need to know how to blend them together, into a new and satisfying version of ourselves. We need to adapt to change.
If only it was easier. Like baking a cake…from scratch.
How about you? Are you better at working from scratch when it comes to your life, or your kitchen?
February 1st, 2010 at 8:02 am
Wonderful post. Wonderful metaphor. As I am the anti-cook (not that I am anti-cooking, just that I never do it), I will address this from the life angle…
I do not think it is possible to start from scratch. Even after we are forced to step back, to reevaluate, to essentially “start over” – after loss, say, I don’t think we can start from scratch. I don’t think we can separate the raw materials, the loose ingredients, from the morass of our past. This is at once disconcerting and liberating, I think. Disconcerting because if we believe this then we are essentially endorsing the idea that we can never begin again. Liberating because it means that even when we think we are alone, starting afresh, we are in fact buoyed by the fare of our past.
I’m not sure I am making a ton of sense, but so be it. This is a ripe metaphor and I look forward to seeing what others make of it.
February 1st, 2010 at 8:15 am
This is such an interesting question. My mom is not a great cook. She’s all about ease and short-cuts; most of her recipes involve a can of Campbell’s soup. As for me, I like cooking (and love baking) from scratch. The act satisfies my precise nature and I get a sense of pride from eating something that took some effort. But – and it’s a big but – since having kids, I am more interested in really high-quality food that’s easier to prepare: I still haven’t resorted to cooking with cans of soup, but I can see their appeal more than I used to.
As for starting from scratch in life, I’m with Aidan. Just as our ability to cook from scratch is affected by our previous experiences in the kitchen, I think that any attempt at a fresh start in life is always informed by our previous experience in, well, living.
February 1st, 2010 at 8:30 am
Wonderful post. As your sister, it’s probably not surprising that I come to this topic with many of the same feelings that you do.
But to borrow from Aidan’s response, cooking from scratch in life is actually a hybrid of sorts. We may start fresh in many new ways, but we always have the same base upon which to build. And to think of it from a culinary perspective, my favorite recipes have come to evolve this way too – taking something I know and then adjusting and tweaking to make it even better.
February 1st, 2010 at 9:11 am
Wow…I love how you can write something, and then see it from a whole new perspective once people begin to comment. I like the idea that we never really start from scratch…that we take our past with us–be it kitchen failures and successes, or life wisdom. Cool thoughts…thank you.
February 1st, 2010 at 12:37 pm
yes, very interesting metaphor. The risk of cooking from scratch is manageable – we can just toss it out if it doesn’t taste very good. The risk of failure in life is shaming. We attempt to make new friends, find a wonderful new job, throw the perfect party, whatever, but the results are not quite as quick or satisfying as baking at 350 for 30 minutes. It takes investment and perseverance and letting go of things outside of our control. A difficult recipe – living from scratch. Thanks for the reflection!
February 1st, 2010 at 2:10 pm
That analogy works beautifully for writing as well. When do you start over? When do you cut? When do you add? When do you revise? I think starting from scratch – be it life, writing, or cooking – is appealing because it is fresh and new. But sometimes, being able to take those leftovers and turn it into something delicious is a much better reward.
February 2nd, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Yummy.
I am now emotionally fed -
and physically hungry.
February 2nd, 2010 at 7:01 pm
Oh, how I wish I could cook or bake from scratch! It seems so…clean. Pure.
February 3rd, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Cooking is easy. Life? Not so much. How do you throw away all the old baggage, the memories?
Loved this post.